< Previous20 Business Link www.blmforum.net SUPPORTING BUSINESS GROWTH employees was not fierce, but skilled workers are now in short supply and bemoaning the “way things used to be” won’t solve the problem. In specific cases, when recruiting for jobs such as IT for instance, the competition for the best candidates is so fierce that local companies may be competing with giants in the US, India and Australia! Not to mention the UK’s own aims to create a Silicon Valley of its own, which could see promising candidates poached by multi-billion mega-corporations long before local businesses have a chance with them. Of course, if competition for graduates is too harsh then it might be worth creating graduates of your own through training and up-skilling. Taking existing team members and investing in them is a tried and proven method, but the real challenge is in finding the right training. There are thousands of providers online that will take your money and promise results, but then those same companies are already breeding grounds for fraudulent mentors who plague communities of single men and promise them pick-up skills for cash. As always, the best bet is to look toward reputable and well-known sources of education, such as the very universities that are creating graduates in the first place. Evening courses exist, and although many members of staff may not enjoy the idea of “going back to school” there are bound to be those who would snap up the opportunity for personal growth, and the increased monetary opportunities that come from it. Staff that already work for a company will typically be comfortable in the business already, and will therefore be much less likely to leave, and it’s always easier to recruit for less-skilled roles to fill a space that someone has been promoted out of. It is important to remember that an up- skilled member of staff will expect an increase in their wages, but this increase may well prove less expensive than hiring and training a new person anyway and comes with the added benefit that the individual does not need to be introduced to the company or its services. They are already familiar with the company culture and how everything works after all. www.blmforum.net Business Link 21 SUPPORTING BUSINESS GROWTH © stock.adobe.com/vegefox.com22 Business Link www.blmforum.net CAT TECH Can you tell us a little about Cat Tech and how it all began? Cat Tech was founded in 1973 in the US when three chemical engineers pioneered a method of catalyst handling in a sealed nitrogen environment, rather than in air. This change was drastic at the time, allowing refineries and petrochemical companies working with catalysts to unload catalysts in a fraction of the time they had before, reducing factory downtime. Cat Tech soon became the leading company for innovation in its field within the US, and after 10 years, the company had 6 US divisions and 2 Canadian divisions. This impressive growth naturally drew attention from many companies who wished to acquire it to augment their own services and offerings, and Cat Tech was acquired by Union Carbide in 1985. It was later acquired by Shell in 1987, who then formed a joint venture with CRI in 1989, who owned a catalyst handling company called Time. Time had operating regions in the UK, France and Germany, and these came under the control of Cat Tech as a result. Under Shell, the company grew to become the leading innovating company for tubular reactor catalyst changeouts and held multiple patents to reduce turnaround times for producers. Shell had acquired Cat Tech to serve its aim for "cradle to grave" services for their catalyst production lines. When did you get started with Cat-Tech and what challenges did you face? I met Cat Tech in New Zealand in 1992 where I was working for some of their competitors, and in 1994 I was hired to work for Cat Tech as Operations Manager in the UK, before I was later promoted to General Manager and later made a Director. One of the earliest challenges, but also successes, that I faced was in expanding the UK branch to open offices in Singapore and Thailand, Bulgaria and later to China. This was new territory that we expanded into, and it meant greatly expanding our team and the number of people we could work with, which was a busy time for Cat Tech. In 2012, I led a management buyout from our then owners Cleanharbors, who were risk-averse at the time and wanted to see much of Cat Tech drawn back to the US. They didn't see the same potential I did in our international operations, so we arranged for an MBO 50 years in the making We speak with Karl Thew, CEO of Cat Tech International Ltd, to learn more about the company's storied 50-year history, his own involvement, and the many challenges and successes they've experienced along the way. 24 Áwww.blmforum.net Business Link 23 CAT TECH24 Business Link www.blmforum.net CAT TECH in which the regions in the UK, Sweden, Singapore, Bulgaria, Thailand and China would become independent. Cat-Tech expanded rapidly across the world. What enabled such fast expansion, and how did the company handle the differences in language and culture? Obviously, expanding to new countries can be difficult, especially when there is such a large cultural shift from the UK to Singapore for example. During Shell's ownership, and before I moved to the UK, Shell had closed down the Cat Tech operations in France and Germany, but we had been working alongside ExxonMobil on a petrochemical plant they were building in Singapore. I was assisting ExxonMobil with reactor design for ease of catalyst handling, and we secured the initial loading of that plant, along with a 5-year catalyst handling contract that continues to exist to this day. As a result of that arrangement, our Singapore office was formed in 1999, and that became something of a springboard in the region for expanding further. We already had some Thai employees in the Singapore office, and talking with them was a great way to learn how to secure an expansion into Thailand, and from there into China, Bulgaria, and further afield. I think a lot of the difficulties we could have run into along the way were alleviated by our willingness to work with the people who worked with and for us, and to listen to their suggestions, but we also worked closely with local companies and governments to make sure they were happy with what we were offering. What prompted the MBO of specific international regions of Cat-Tech? The MBO was prompted in the main part by what I saw as a risk-averse set of decisions from our latest US owners, who wanted to focus their attention domestically and didn't want to continue the expansion overseas that we – and myself, especially – had been undertaking. Cleanharbors, who owned Cat Tech at the time, were using almost all the money that came from the new expansions overseas to bring it back into the US to grow the market there, and we felt that this was missing out on the clear expansion opportunities we had shown were not only viable, but profitable. All expansion is costly, obviously, and they wanted to focus on their own market. That's why we went to them with an MBO, which they gladly assisted us with, to acquire the UK and international www.blmforum.net Business Link 25 CAT TECH offices of Cat Tech, and to be able to operate those independently, albeit with a non-competition clause keeping us from the US market for a period of 5 years. It was by no means a simple task as the MBO took a full 18 months to come to fruition. Being an international company, the lockdown and global pandemic must have been a tricky moment. How did you adapt? The pandemic was especially painful for us, as you say, and a large part of that was because of how mobile we've been as an international company. We've always enjoyed the freedom to be able to move key personnel around and bring their expertise to new markets, and that became very difficult during the lockdown. That's not to say it stopped, however. Much of our work, and the clients we worked with, were too important to the infrastructure of their parent countries to really close down, so we had to adapt and embrace the various measures of different countries, all of which could differ from the other. We also did our best to keep teams together to avoid disruption, and to make sure everyone had regular health checks. Still, with many of our customers being involved in refining and petrochemicals, the fact that so much international travel ceased hit their own production, which in turn bounced back on us. Planes weren't flying and that meant a difficult time for us. We'd just come out of 2019 with our best year to date, and then walked straight into 2020 being our worst. The recovery has been difficult, but it has been a recovery, and we're proud to be making progress on getting back into our plans for continued expansion and development. What would you say are the proudest moments in Cat- Tech’s 50 years of history? The proudest moments in Cat Tech's history have to include the foundation of the company and the development of the technology that allowed for the ability to vacuum with man entry into a nitrogen atmosphere using specialised life support breathing apparatus. The impact this had on the industry cannot be understated, as the previous method was significantly slower. Cat Tech's technology allowed those companies to do what used to take weeks in days and revolutionised the industry. Another proud moment for myself is obviously our management buyout in 2012. It was such a liberating moment to know we could pursue our ambitions and that we would be able to invest the money we'd made back into ourselves, and to see Cat Tech expanded to new countries across the world. In 2018, after expanding back into the US and Houston, I was also greatly honoured to be nominated and then crowned as Business Person of the Year, by the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce. Are there any plans for the future you can tell us about? Well, there's always a lot of exciting things happening. We're currently looking at innovating with new technology to develop catalyst systems for robotic unloading, which should not only see an improvement in terms of efficiency, but also a great improvement in terms of worker safety. This is exciting new ground for us that may yet be another pioneering moment in Cat Tech's history. We're also expanding our operations further afield as we originally wished to, with new expansions into the Middle East in the works, alongside Asia and, of course, further into the US. We expanded back into the US in 2018 after our non- competition clause with Cleanharbors ended, but now, after our recovery from COVID, we're looking at further expansions into the US. For more information, or to contact Cat Tech, visit www.cat-tech.com26 Business Link www.blmforum.net IT AND COMMUNICATIONS The internet’s unstoppable influencewww.blmforum.net Business Link 27 IT AND COMMUNICATIONS © stock.adobe.com/Joshua Montgomery T he data paints a clear picture of this ongoing transformation, revealing remarkable changes in the way we connect, communicate, and consume content. During the tumultuous 2020 lockdowns, we witnessed a surge in landline call volumes and a significant increase in time spent watching broadcast TV. But as 2021 unfolded, the declines in these traditional mediums became evident, and this trend has continued through the subsequent 2 years. Using Ofcom’s yearly Communications Market Report, let’s explore the key industry trends and the reasoning behind them. The average time spent watching broadcast TV channels fell to 2 hours and 38 minutes per day, a decrease that was even more pronounced among the younger demographic, where 16–24-year-olds were spending just 39 minutes per day tuned in. Outgoing calls from landlines saw a staggering 20% year-on-year drop, now lower than the pre-pandemic levels recorded in 2019. Conversely, the demand for data across fixed and mobile connections has shown no signs of slowing down. In 2022, the average consumption per data user on mobile increased by a remarkable 24%, reaching an impressive 8.0 GB per month. On fixed broadband connections, the average monthly data use saw a 6% increase, totalling 482 GB. These trends were facilitated by the adoption of faster broadband connections, with the number of full fibre lines surging by 52% to reach 3.1 million in 2022. This expansion contributed to a total of 26.9 million superfast broadband lines, delivering actual download speeds of 30 Mbit/s or higher, as consumers continued to upgrade from standard broadband services. The impact of these changes extends to the economic landscape of the United Kingdom’s telecommunications sector. In 2022, the sector generated £31.8 billion in revenue, experiencing a year-on-year decline of £1.5 billion (5%). Retail fixed and mobile services contributed £14.0 billion and £12.9 billion respectively, with wholesale fixed and mobile services making up the remaining £4.9 billion. Notably, mobile services accounted for 48% of total retail revenues in 2022, marking an increase of 1.4 percentage points from the previous year. Fixed broadband connections also saw a modest uptrend, with 0.2 million (0.7%) new connections added in 2022, bringing the total to 28.0 million. The growth in superfast broadband lines continued, rising by The influence of the internet on traditional communication services has been nothing short of transformative. What began as a slow but steady shift has gained momentum year after year. 28 Á28 Business Link www.blmforum.net IT AND COMMUNICATIONS 5% to 23.4 million in 2022, and by year- end, 83% of lines offered superfast speeds or higher. Impressively, 70% of broadband connections utilized fibre technologies. However, traditional voice calls saw a noticeable decline, with total fixed and mobile call volumes plummeting by 24.5 billion minutes (11%) to 202 billion minutes in 2022. Despite this decrease, these volumes remained slightly higher than the levels recorded in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Mobile networks took the lead in 2022, accounting for 84% of call volumes, up from 82% in 2021. Outgoing calls from fixed lines faced an 8.2-billion-minute (20%) reduction, dropping to 32 billion minutes, while total outgoing call volumes from mobile phones decreased by 16.4 billion minutes (9%) to 170 billion minutes. While traditional broadcast television and landline calls experienced declines, the digital realm was on an upswing. Online video revenues saw growth in 2022, contrasting with declines in broadcaster revenues. The total audio- visual sector raked in £20 billion, up by 5.3%. This increase was driven by surges in subscription video-on-demand services (SVoD) and online video advertising. Such services, like Netflix and Disney+ played a significant role, contributing 16% of total revenues (£3.3 billion). Online video advertising added another 13% (£2.7 billion). In contrast, commercial broadcast TV revenues experienced a 1.8% dip, falling to £11.1 billion. Despite this, radio remained a formidable player in the realm of communication. A staggering 88% of adults tuned in to the radio every week, dedicating an average of 20 hours each week to the medium. Conversely, broadcast TV viewing continued its decline, with the average daily viewing dropping by 21 minutes in 2022, from 2 hours and 59 minutes in 2021 to 2 hours and 38 minutes. The younger generation, aged 16-24, now watches just 39 minutes of broadcast TV on average each day, a stark contrast to the previous year’s 53 www.blmforum.net Business Link 29 IT AND COMMUNICATIONS minutes. To illustrate this, combined revenues for commercial public service broadcasters (PSBs), digital multichannels, and pay-TV platform operators declined by 1.8% to £11.1 billion. However, this figure still represented a 2.6% increase compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Advertising in the digital audiovisual space saw growth but at a notably slower pace than the previous year. TV and online audiovisual advertising revenue reached £6.4 billion, growing by 3.1% in 2022. This growth was primarily driven by a £341 million increase in online video advertising and a smaller £12 million increase in multichannel TV advertising. On the other hand, commercial PSB channels experienced a combined advertising revenue decline of £165 million, down 5.9% year on year. As the internet continues to shape the communication sector, online platforms have become central to our daily lives. According to a recent survey, a staggering 76% of internet users aged 13 and above reported visiting YouTube in the last four weeks, making it the most frequented platform. Facebook followed closely behind, with 69% of users in the same age group visiting the site. The preferences of different age groups in content consumption are equally fascinating. For teenagers, the most commonly used sites for user- generated videos are YouTube (90%), Instagram (70%), TikTok (66%), and Snapchat (58%). Meanwhile, among users over the age of 55, Facebook takes the lead, with 66% of them using the platform. Whilst traditional communication services experience declines, digital realms, from streaming services to online advertising, continue to flourish. The economic landscape has shifted, with revenue streams adjusting to accommodate these evolving consumer preferences. As we move forward into the digital age, the only certainty is that change will continue to define the way we connect, communicate, and consume content. © stock.adobe.com/Rawpixel.comNext >